Posts Tagged "The Hunt Museum"

At the beginning of July, I ran a Summer Story Storm workshop at The Hunt Museum in Limerick for kids from 7 to 11 years old (I actually had one 6 year old who told his story through pictures only – full of colour and detail).

The kids had 2.5 hours to find a artifact in the museum to use in their story, and then to write an original piece of their own. Their work would then be bound as an individual book at the end of the session.

We did a quick-fire tour of the museum, where the kids drew and took notes on their favourite objects. Then we returned to the library where they wrote, and drew, until their little hands and brains couldn’t take any more. Even when parents arrived to pick them up, few wanted to leave.

I chatted to the kids as they wrote, and helped them out if they got stuck. They worked so hard, and produced wonderful, twisted, action packed stories. It was a great morning filled with much pencil biting and imagination stretching – a perfect morning in my book!

Heroes and villains action scene: characters ALL created by kids attending the workshops

Second item on the agenda this year so far: Creative Writing and Illustration workshops for children. I run these workshops as part of my Writer-in-Residence programme at The Hunt Museum in Limerick.

This is my second year as W-in-R at The Hunt, and the whole experience has been amazing. The kids’ enthusiasm and dedication to their stories makes running the workshops a dream for me.

We start off by looking for inspiration amongst the hundreds of artifacts in the museum’s eclectic collection. Every drawing, and word created in the workshops are recorded in the kids’ notebooks. These notebooks act as a record of progress and inspiration through the 4 Saturday sessions.

The kids are encouraged to create story characters through group discussions. We investigate story setting by experiencing and describing the external and internal environment. The kids draw scenes from their stories, as well as completing finished chapters for a final reading session held in the museum on the last day.

I don’t know about the kids, but I certainly have a blast at every workshop, but my favourite part, without a doubt, is when the kids read and critique each other’s work. I can see their confidence grow, and they come away wanting to write more.